Today's Hotness: A-Sides, The Sea And Cake, Pop Narcotic

>> This is probably a first: VBS visits Philadelphia's Fishtown section to interview the indie rock up-and-comers The A-Sides and capture them performing slices of hot new numbers. The quintet recently disclosed it had signed to Vagrant. It has had a teaser cut from its long awaited sophomore set Silver Storms floating around since last year, so it is nice the record finally found a home. Anybody with any inside baseball on the deal the band had fall through before the Vagrant deal should shoot us an email; we like stuff like that. Anyway, the new A-Sides material sounds like it has taken cues from the stellar closer "Here or There" from the band's excellent debut Hello, Hello (released on Prison Jazz in 2005). Haven't heard "Cinematic" from Silver Storms yet? Here's a link to the MP3; the record is out Aug. 28.

The A-Sides -- "Cinematic" -- Silver Storms
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>> News to us: In addition to releasing its very sharp seventh studio record this month, veteran indie quartet The Sea And Cake is selling a digital-only EP entitled Anybody. It is only available via ITunes and includes the three tracks "All In Throws" (which sounds like a bit of a throwback to the One Bedroom record), "Breathless" and "Mis." The Sea And Cake released its most recent full-length Everybody May 8; we reviewed it here. Buy Anybody from ITunes here.

>> Interesting feature here in the Boston Globe about the founder of '90s indie label Pop Narcotic, a Boston-based label that issued a number of important releases including the first Helium single and the excellent double 10" Why Do You Think They Call It Pop? Nowadays Pop Narcotic's Bill Peregoy runs a yoga studio, which recently launched a new class that eschews the more stereotypical yoga class soundtrack music in favor of indie rock. If this happened in our neighborhood we'd definitely check it out -- since we already listen to music all day we might as well try yoga while doing some listening.

>> A well-written if run-of-the-mill overview of the current state of the traditional music industry in the New York Times here. Nicely assimilates a lot of news pegs (releases from Paul McCartney and that 50 Cent fellow, mergers and acquisitions amongst major labels and music publishers). Not a crucial read, but if this is the sort of thing you don't follow day-to-day, it links a lot of occurrences together to give a decent picture of the state of things. Likewise, you should probably read this interview of HypeMachine's Anthony Volodkin over at Wired. It might not make a lot of sense if you don't know what HypeMachine is, but if you do it is pretty interesting. The most fascinating thing to us is that Mr. Volodkin is so darn young. We wish we were half as clever when we were his age... in 1995.

>> The Ian Curtis biopic "Control" won best European film at the Cannes Film Festival. NME has the details. Pitchfork recently posted the trailer, which got us a little excited and a little disappointed at the same time. Watch it at YouTube here.

Today's Hotness: Mendoza Line, A-Sides, Spoon, Fields

>> The biggest surprise of the day was news that indie rock journeypersons The Mendoza Line are playing several shows this week; we've posted all four of the dates below. Needless to say we'll be seeing the show. But given the recent tumult within the band [which we noted here], we're not sure who we'll be seeing besides guitarist and singer Tim Bracy. We are excited to see a set of all Bracy compositions -- his songs have always been our favorites of those penned by three songwriters (although Peter Hoffman's "Baby, I Know What You're Thinking" is also a favorite). What's left of the Mendoza Line in the wake of Bracy's split with singer-songwriter Shannon McArdle will release Aug. 21 the mini-album 30 Year Low along with a companion disc The Final Remarks Of The Legendary Malcontent. In all there's 26 tracks of new tunes, covers and alternative takes. We're excited to hear it. Here are those tour dates:

05.22 -- Philadelphia PA -- World Cafe Live
05.23 -- Hoboken NJ -- Maxwell's
05.24 -- Boston MA -- Lizard Lounge
05.25 -- Providence RI -- AS220

>> Well, they hinted about it early in the day here, and then Philebrity broke the news here at the end of the day. All of which means that the A-Sides have finally disclosed that they have signed to Vagrant, which we first posted here in January after seeing the news at HerJazz. Anyway, the band has several shows booked in the near future, and its long-awaited sophomore set Silver Storms will be released Aug. 28.

06.20 –- Dark Horse Tavern -- State College, PA
06.22 –- Schuba’s Tavern -- Chicago, IL
06.23 –- Continental Block Party -- Chicago, IL
07.20 –- Xponential Music Festival -- Camden, NJ

>> That piano riff in the recently available-ized and awesome Spoon tune "The Ghost Of You Lingers" really reminds us of that Billy Joel hit "Pressure." Just sayin'. So obviously the Spoon record leaked -- so why can't we pre-order it? We'd buy this record five times -- it is our favorite Spoon record of them all. There's something about the skeletal tunes made bombastic with rich Motown-ish production that makes every song a victory. In all the glorious melodicism we even hear shades of E.L.O., who we've been talking about much too much lately. And the tune "The Underdog" sounds a bit like Thin Lizzy, no?

>> Notable Western Mass-based indie trio The Mitchells are on tour. We caught their show at the end of March and reviewed it here, and we reviewed their latest record Slow Gears here. Definitely worth checking out.

05.22 -- The Cake Shop -- New York, NY
05.23 -- The Brighton Bar -- Long Branch, NJ
05.24 -- The Reservoir -- Carrboro, North Carolina
05.26 -- Valentines -- Albany, NY
05.27 -- Great Scott -- Allston, MA
06.01 -- The Elevens -- Northampton, MA
06.29 -- Paper City Brewery -- Holyoke, MA

>> There's something about the animated figures in Fields new animated video for the revamped version of "Song For The Fields" that makes us think of the animated dood in the videos for Judas Priest's "Locked In" and "Turbo Lover." Check 'em out.

>> Our new favorite podcast? Keep Hope Inside. We like how the host explains where towns are situated in the UK when referring to them, because our knowledge of the geography over there is virtually non-existent. Here's the Keep Hope Inside blog where there's information to get all set up with the podcast.